In the News Archive

Apple and Dell: Business Models

In the News 73 Comments
Dell and its business model has been the focus of a lot of comment on Apple oriented forums in recent months. The Dell model is said to be unviable, and Dell's recent news is said to prove this. A limited endorsement of sorts for the so called "end to end model" in music has been published by Walt Mossberg in the WSJ. Recently a real sky-is-falling article with this theme has appeared here. This is a subject that matters. If the advocates of the so-called "end to end model" are right, it implies that the industry structure which allows us all to source hardware from wherever we want, and run a variety of OSs on it, is in danger.
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The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

  Submitted by brewin In the News 63 Comments
"At PC World, we spend most of our time talking about products that make your life easier or your work more productive. But it's the lousy ones that linger in our memory long after their shrinkwrap has shriveled, and that make tech editors cry out, 'What have I done to deserve this?' Still, even the worst products deserve recognition (or deprecation). So as we put together our list of World Class winners for 2006, we decided also to spotlight the 25 worst tech products that have been released since PC World began publishing nearly a quarter-century ago."
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Symantec Caught in Norton ‘Rootkit’ Flap

  Submitted by dax592 In the News 31 Comments
From eWeek: "Symantec Corp. has admitted to using a rootkit-type feature in Norton SystemWorks that could provide the perfect hiding place for attackers to place malicious files on computers. The anti-virus vendor acknowledged that it was hiding a directory from Windows APIs as a feature to stop customers from accidentally deleting files but, prompted by warnings from security experts, the company shipped a SystemWorks update to eliminate the risk."
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Technology of the Year Awards

  Submitted by Hakime In the News 7 Comments
"2005 will be remembered for the emergence of multicore CPUs, the rise of enterprise x86, and even the quiet realization in datacenters throughout the land that CPU virtualization works wonders. But these weren’t the only technologies making waves. The year also brought important - if perhaps more subtle - progress to nearly the entire IT landscape. InfoWorld followed the action, analyzing the advances and lifting the hood on the latest innovations. What will be the most meaningful developments in 2006? What were the best products of 2005?"
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Google, Microsoft, Sun Join Forces to Set up R&D Lab

In the News 6 Comments
Google, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, along with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are helping to set up a software research laboratory. The three companies are providing $ 7.5 million in funding over five years, which combined with other industry funding covers 80 percent of investment in the lab. The other 20 percent will come from government institutions such as the National Science Foundation. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems Lab, or RAD Lab, will primarily concentrate on developing technology to assist small groups or individuals in creating, testing, and publishing Internet services.
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US State Finalises Its Microsoft Snub

  Submitted by Sansta In the News 100 Comments
The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalised its decision to standardise desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office. State agencies in the executive branch are now supposed to migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by 1 January, 2007, a change that will affect about 50 000 desktop PCs. The reference model also confirms that Adobe's PDF format is considered an "open format".
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IBM Sponsored Study: Linux Less Expensive

  Submitted by Tyr. In the News 33 Comments
Two research reports sponsored by IBM argue that Linux is less expensive to buy and operate than Windows or Unix. The first paper claims Linux is 40% less expensive than a comparable x86-based Windows server and 54% less than a comparable Sparc-based Solaris server. The second that using Linux has "Second Stage Benefits" such as attracting IT workers, among whome open source is increasingly popular.
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Open Source Exchange Teams With Red Hat, Novell

In the News 14 Comments
Open-Xchange Inc., maker of an open source version of Microsoft's Exchange server software, will bundle its open source collaboration platform with Novell/SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux distributions. The platform, called Open-Xchange Server 5 (OX), is an open source-licensed collaboration suite that offers a typical array of collaboration features, including e-mail, calendar, contacts, appointments, tasks and others. All are accessible either via a Web client or a fat client, including Outlook, Palm and KDE Kontact.
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